Max Liebermann

Professor Richard Cassirer

1918

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Artist: Max Liebermann 1847–1935
Original title: Herrenporträt Professor Cassirer
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 965 × 781 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by H. Cassirer, son of the sitter 1963
Reference: T00632

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Liebermann painted numerous portraits throughout his life, including many of friends and acquaintances living in Berlin. Professor Richard Cassirer was born in 1868 in Breslau and was Professor of Neurology at Berlin University between 1912 and 1925, the year of his death. His brother Paul Cassirer, a prominent art dealer, commissioned this portrait on the occasion of Richard Cassirer's fiftieth birthday. Cassirer sat for the portrait in Liebermann's studio, which was in the attic of his Berlin house right next to the Brandenburg Gate. It was shown during the summer of 1918 at the Free Secession exhibition.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

Max Liebermann 1847-1935

T00632 Professor Richard Cassirer 1918

Inscribed 'M Liebermann 1918.' t.r.
Oil on canvas, 38 x 30 3/4 (96.5 x 78)
Presented by H. Cassirer, the son of the sitter, 1963
Exh: Freie Secession, Berlin, May-July 1918 (103) as 'Herrenporträt Prof. C.'
Lit: Erich Hancke, Max Liebermann (Berlin 1923), p.522
Repr: Kunst und Künstler, XVI, 1918, p.428

Professor Richard Cassirer was born in 1868 at Breslau and was Professor of Neurology at Berlin University from 1912 until his death in 1925. This portrait of him was commissioned by his brother Paul Cassirer, the art dealer, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. It was done from life in Liebermann's studio in Berlin. (Letters from the donor, 1 January 1964 and 29 February 1964).

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.440-1, reproduced p.440